‘A sort of appeal to the people’ a recent acquisition of English broadsides and broadsheets 1641-1714

Turnbull Library Record, Volume 11, Issue 2, 1 October 1978, Page 105

‘A sort of appeal to the people’ a recent acquisition of English broadsides and broadsheets 1641-1714

J. E. TRAUE

The Turnbull Library acquired* from a London dealer late in 1976 an assortment 0f289 English broadsides and broadsheets published between 1641 and 1714 consisting of almost a hundred official publications (proclamations, declarations, instructions and orders of the executive from Charles I through the Council of State and Oliver Cromwell to the later Stuarts; acts, votes, orders, resolutions, ordinances and declarations of Parliament; etc.) together with political and religious tracts, news-sheets, accounts of crimes, trials and executions, and satires and ‘lybels’ in verse and prose. The term ‘broadside’ is used here to denote single sheets printed on one side only and intended, in general, for public display and ‘broadsheet’ for single sheets printed on both sides.

The subject emphasis is overwhelmingly political. The religious pieces are, as one would expect of this period, permeated with the political threat from popery at home and across the Channel; the two pieces of verse are both political, A Panegyrick Upon Oates and The Sale of Esau’s Birthright, or the Neiv Buckingham Ballad; and the arrests, trials and executions are predominantly for alleged attempts on the life of the head of state. Titus Oates and the Popish Plot are well represented with 24 items published between 1680 and 1684 and the Rye House Plot and associated arrests and executions with another 24. The progress of Lord Russell, Algernon Sidney, and Sir Thomas Armstrong to Tyburn are recorded together with the death of the Earl of Essex in the Tower. The popular agitation in favour of Charles IPs illegitimate son, the Protestant Duke of Monmouth, and against the legitimate and Catholic heir James Duke of York is represented by 7 items between 1681 and 1682, but Monmouth’s luckless rebellion of 1685 is represented by only two. A number of minor but diverting episodes in the history of the time are recorded. The murder of Thomas Thynne of Longleat (1648-1682) which aroused the popular imagination with its potent blend of rivalry in love, duels, foreign connections and a hint of treason is represented by three pieces. The departure for France in 1682 of one of the accused, Count John Philip Koenigsmark, the

unsuccessful suitor who was acquitted of murder (his three alleged associates were hanged) is linked in one broadside with the departure of another detested foreigner, the Duchess of Portsmouth, the French and Catholic mistress of Charles 11, in the Duchess of Portsmouth’s and Count Coningsmarks ’ Farwel to England (1682). The collection also includes the ‘virulent pamphlet’ of 1682, noted in the DNB , attacking the Duchess in unequivocal language. It is reputed that Nell Gwyn the King’s actress mistress rebuked a hostile mob at Carfax which had mistaken her coach for that of the Duchess of Portsmouth with the words ‘Pray good people, be civil, I am the Protestant whore’. Bishop Gilbert Burnet, that ‘vigorous polemist’ as the DNB describes him, whose major works are already well represented in the Turnbull collections, is attacked in three pieces dated 1682 and in another after his departure for France in 1683. This ‘late scurrilous pamphlet’ Dr B — t’s Farewell (1683) drew a two page broadsheet reply from Burnet which is also in the collection.

The first item, His Majesties Letter to Both Houses of Parliament 20 Januarii 1641 and the last, Wheras it hath Pleased Almighty God to Call to His Mercy our Late Sovereign Lady Queen Anne of Blessed Memory . . . Prince George, Elector of Brunswick-Lunenberg . . . is now Become Our Lawful and Rightful Leige Lord ... Ist August 1714 are representative both of the political concerns of an age of revolution and of the official pieces which make up over a third of the collection. It is worthy of note that of the 30 items published between 1641 and 1649, a period of reduced official censorship and the growth of unofficial printing, all are official while most of the pieces for the period 1650-59 are official or semi-official. The obvious deficiency here, as elsewhere in the collection, is that of the popular literature of the street. There are only two ballad pieces, both of 1679, and only a handful of ‘amazing occurrences’ and accounts of non-political trials and murders and no almanacs. None of the 75 ballads and verse broadsides in Hyder E. Rollins’ Cavalier and Puritan: Ballads and Broadsides Illustrating the Period of the Great Rebellion 1640-1660 (New York, 1923) is included. The evidence from the catalogues of the printed materials of this period such as those of the Thomason Tracts and the Narcissus Luttrell collection in the British Library and the Bibliotheca Lindesiana is that this new acquisition is not truly representative of the broadside and broadsheet output of the period. Several explanations for the absence of some categories and the overall weakness in street literature can be offered but without a statement of provenance for the collection they are little more than speculation. One obvious explanation is that the dedicated work of the bibliographers of English broadside literature, men like Rollins,

Baildon, J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps, Bloom, Edmond, Steele and Rye and the popularisers like Ashton, John Payne Collier, Charles Hindley, Leslie Shepard and Robert Collison has been successful in enumerating and describing the street literature, especially the ballads, and making it popular with collectors. The assortment acquired by the Turnbull is certainly light in most of the categories now sought after by collectors. This relative absence of collectors’ pieces, no doubt a substantial factor in determining the modest

price paid for the collection, is no disadvantage in terms of the Turnbull’s collecting emphasis for the seventeenth century. A decision to move away from collecting expensive major works and to concentrate on the selective acquisition of minor publications around subjects already well represented in the collections was made several years ago. The Turnbull’s collection of seventeenth century broadsides and broadsheets before this acquisition of 289 pieces in 1976 was small and very uneven in its chronological spread and subject coverage. There were only 75, all published in the 28 years between 1672 and 1699, and they were predominantly political and religious. Thirty-three published between 1672 and 1685 bound in with Popery Display’d in its Proper Colours by J. S. (1681) relate to the Popish Plot and 23 bound in with John Zeale’s Narrative of the Phanatical Plot (1683) relate to the Rye House Plot. Six more, bound in with the Arraignment, Trials, Conviction and Condemnation of Sir Rich. Grahme, Bart. Viscount Preston . . . and fohn Ashton, Gent, for High Treason (1691) relate to various trials and executions for treason in the period 1695-7. The new acquisition widens the chronological spread and the subject coverage and strengthens the already strong political and religious emphasis. Though it is not fully representative of the output of broadsides in the period, the Turnbull collection now documents most of the major political and religious concerns of the period 1660-1700 and imparts much of the flavour of the times. The. broadside, with its coverage of official news from the executive and Parliament, unofficial news from the streets, and current political and religious controversy, was a forerunner of the newspaper and as such justifies the description applied by Sir Leoline Jenkins, Secretary of State 1680-84 and a notorious opponent of the publication of the transactions of the House of Commons, of‘a sort of appeal to the people’.

Items in the collection not listed in Wing (1945 & 1972) Short-Title Catalogue, 1641-1700 BRYDALL, JOHN. The case of Robert Williamson, merchant, one of the assignes of Sir Robert Vyner . . . Between Robert Williamson . . . and Mr Attorney General, defendant. Upon a writ of error in Parliament. [1699?] brs. Dr Oates’s answer to Count Teckly’s letter giving him a true account of the present horrible plot, [n.p., n.d.] brs. Possibly Wing O 2B [1684], ENGLAND: PARLIAMENT. Die Veneris, 4. Decemb. 1646. Ordered by the Lords and Commons . . . that Wednesday next be appointed for a day of public humiliation. For Edward Husband, [1646] brs.

ENGLAND: PARLIAMENT. Octob. 4. 1643. By vertue of an ordinance lately made by both Houses of Parliament. For Laurence Blaiklock, [1643] brs. Similar to Wing E 2466. The execution of William Lord Russel . . . entred according to order, colop: By J. Grantham, 1683. brs. Similar to Wing A 384. A full and true account of a most horrid and bloody murther, committed by a Roman Catholick gentlewoman, on the body of her husband . . . 1688 [n.p., 1688] brs. A full and true account of the dying behaviour of Sir John Fenwick . . . beheaded on Tower-Hill, the 28th ofjanuary for high-treason. For C. Wilcox, 1696. brs.

Great news from the King of Poland: or an intercepted letter from Tony, the first King of Poland, to the Reverend Salamanca Doctor, colop: For A.G., 1682. brs. The King’s reasons (with some reflections upon them) for withdrawing himself from Rochester . . . ordered by him to be published, (by Henry Hills, but that he was out of the way.) [n.p., 1688?] brs. A letter from Sir William Waller at Roterdam, to Titus Oates, colop: Printed, 1683. brs.

A list of the Lords that enter’d their protest against the vacancy of the throne. Feb. 7. 1688. Printed, 1689. Manuscript annotation: ‘lt is said the printer is to be whipt by order of the Lords. ’ Reasons against the continuing of those in their places that bought them of the pretended judges during the usurpation, [n.p., n.d .] brs. The Keepers of the liberty of England by the authority of Parliament, to all parsons, ministers, lecturers, vicars, and curates, and also to all Justices of the Peace. [1659]. Letters patent for a collection on behalf of the sufferers by fire at Southwold in Sussex.

To the supreme authority of the nation, the Parliament of the Commonwealth of England: the humble representation and petition of. . . inhabitants of the town of Kingston upon Hull. For Livewel Chapman, 1659. brs. A true account of the manner of behaviour and execution of Charles Bateman, chirurgeon. colop: By E. Mallet, for D. Mallet, 1685. brs. A true account of the most horrible and bloody murther, committed by a notorious Papist, one Thomas Resthall, upon the body of his own wife, colop: By G.C., 1689. brs. A true list of the knights, citizens and burgesses of the Parliament at Westminster in March, 6. 169%. By Thomas Braddyll, and Robert Everingham, 1693. brs.

* The purchase was made by the Alexander Turnbull Library Endowment Trust.